Why are 50 Cent and Ja Rule beefing?

For over 20 years, 50 Cent and Ja Rule have been at each other’s throats, putting their rival down at every opportunity. Their beef looks like it will rumble on forever, and quite frankly, it’s hilarious, but what exactly started it all?

Famously in 2018, 50 Cent took their feud to extreme heights and demonstrated his trolling instincts when he bought up the first 200 tickets for Ja Rule’s show in Las Vegas, which he then elected to leave empty. The prank cost $3,000, which is pocket change for Fiddy, and even Ja managed to see the funny side of the elaborate scheme.

Unlike most hip-hop rivalries, this one has become more jovial as time has gone on. Fiddy took tremendous pleasure in watching the Fyre Festival fiasco play out, as Ja Rule became public enemy number one after the disastrous event.

While the feud is now lighthearted between the pair, it was anything but genial for years and began after Rule was robbed at gunpoint Queens while filming a music video. In a turn of events, the rapper would later once again meet his attacker when he saw him at a club with 50 Cent.

“A friend of mine robbed Ja Rule,” Fiddy remembered in his biography, From Pieces to Weight. “That’s how the beef originally started. My man robbed him for a chain, and then this guy named Brown came and got the chain back for Ja. Later, Ja saw me in a club with the kid who robbed him. I went over to say, ‘What’s up’ to Ja, and he acted like he had a problem with me. But I’m not the one who robbed him.”

Even though he wasn’t the one held at gunpoint, Fiddy released a diss track that ridiculed Ja’s label on his debut album. They were then both booked to appear at a nightclub in Atlanta, and a fight broke out.

In a revenge attack, 50 Cent was stabbed by Ja’s entourage in 2000 after discovering he was recording at the Hit Factory and ambushed him. Strangely, Fiddy was unphased by the incident and didn’t see it as a big deal. Then again, the immortal rapper has been shot nine times, and he’s not like you or me. 

From that moment, their beef played out in diss tracks for a decade before they found themselves sitting next to each other on a plane, and surprisingly, there was no altercation.

However, after the concert stunt in 2018, 50 Cent said the beef between them will never end. “It’s never over. We may take a break, but [it] ain’t over till one of us is gone,” he posted on social media.

At this point, the feud is nothing more than a plaything for the pair of them, and their days of violent conduct towards each other are long over, yet, 50 will always be plotting creative ways to get at Rule. These stunts are no longer revenge for the stabbing, which now simply exists for entertainment purposes, and long may it continue.